In the world of high finance, it’s all about risk and return. With big risks come big rewards . . . and even bigger dangers. And no one knows this better than Stephen Frey. From the New York Times bestselling author of Trust Fund and The Day Trader comes an electrifying new thriller of money, mayhem, and murder. Angela Day has survived a rough past–from a hard-scrabble childhood scarred by the tragic deaths of her father and best friend, to losing custody of her only child to her adulterous ex-husband and his powerful family. But despite it all, at thirty-one, she’s carved out a good career with Sumter Bank one of Richmond, Virginia’s most venerable institutions. And now, summoned under mysterious circumstances to meet one of the world’s richest entrepreneurs, it looks as if Angela may be on the threshold of a brighter future. “If you help me, I’ll help you.” This is Jake Lawrence’s offer to Angela. A stock-holder in Sumter Bank, the reclusive multibillionaire is planning a takeover of a hot, new company–and he wants Angela to apply her considerable skills and charms to make sure it all goes smoothly . . . and secretly. In exchange, Lawrence promises to use his formidable influence to permanently reunite Angela with her son. For Angela, it’s the one reward for which she would risk everything. And accepting Jake Lawrence’s deal will mean doing just that, as his mind-boggling wealth and power come with the ultimate price tag: enemies everywhere have marked him for death. And anyone close to him is fair game. Now, as Angela prepares to broker the deal of her career, she’s stalked by foes on every front. Then, after stumbling on evidence of an insidious conspiracy within her own company, she becomes a target for termination. Armed with the most volatile kind of inside information, Angela has the power to bring the dirtiest players down from the highest places. But they have the power to strike first–at the one thing most precious to Angela. Silent Partner reaffirms Stephen Frey’s reputation as a master of page-turning suspense in the world of big-money movers and shakers–where everyone has a price, and there’s more than one way to make a killing. Financial chicanery is Stephen Frey's forte, and in his newest thriller (following The Insider and The Day Trader ), he sets up one of the world's richest men and a young bank executive, who's trying to wrest custody of her son from her well-connected ex-husband, in a sting operation to expose blatant racism in the mortgage practices of a big Virginia financial institution. Angela Day, whose African American college roommate died in her arms after a racially motivated attack, is a gutsy and appealing woman whose life is turned upside down when she gets involved with Jake Lawrence, a billionaire with his own reasons for wanting to expose the corruption at the core of the bank that employs her. When he offers her the chance to get her son back, she plunges into a world of double-dealing where nothing and no one are what they seem and everyone's motives are suspect. Some of the coincidences strain credulity, and the characters are too one-dimensional to care about, but Frey makes the most of his convoluted plot and wraps up the details with an unexpected love story. --Jane Adams Angela is in trouble. First, she is offered a job by an eccentric billionaire whom several people want dead. Then she discovers a means of determining the race of an online mortgage applicant. Only a lawyer like Frey (Trust Fund) knows how dangerous that could be. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. Financial-thriller guru Frey returns with his latest novel-a-year entry. Angela Day, a junior VP at a bank, is surprised when she's asked by eccentric, reclusive billionaire Jake Lawrence to handle the due diligence on a small company he wants to acquire. Why her? she wonders aloud to him, only to be met with evasive and unsatisfactory answers. Her bosses are none too pleased that she's working independently; in fact, they fear she is being used as a pawn so that Jake, a shareholder with a growing interest, might acquire their beloved bank. Angela had no idea she was putting herself in danger by dealing with Jake, a man who is the target of many powerful people's ire. Her only relief amidst her bosses' paranoia (unfounded) and Jake's (well-founded) is John Tucker, Jake's lackey, who seems to be the only person Angela can trust. Or can she? Is the growing bond between them lulling her into too comfortable a position? Frey's departure from the true financial thriller into this more psychological one is a welcome change, and not quite as clumsily executed as his last departure, the very popular Trust Fund (2000). The well-formulated surprise ending rounds out what's sure to be another hit. Mary Frances Wilkens Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved “Harrowing . . . Frey enlivens finance the way Patricia Cornwell does forensic science and the way D